


The Expressional Range of a Teaspoon

by BrownieFox



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Stolen Century, focuses mostly on magnus and lucretia, introspective, magnus basically has rbf, most other mentioned in passing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-15 22:58:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18679036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrownieFox/pseuds/BrownieFox
Summary: Lucretia notices that Magnus looks angry most of the time.





	The Expressional Range of a Teaspoon

When Lucretia first meets Magnus, she’s met with an angry face.

Well, okay, that’s both a lie and somewhat of an exaggeration.

The first time she meets Magnus is actually during introductions with the entire crew of the Starblaster. Captain Davenport had, of course, met all of them before, and most had seen each other at least in passing at the IPRE, but Lucretia was not a social person. Even when she was out in public, she was usually more concerned with her writing than she was with actual people. So, even if she had bumped into him in the halls before, it was their actual first meeting.

(She finds out almost a hundred years later, when Magnus hands her a wooden duck as a gift as well as a long overdue and entirely unnecessary apology, that he had once literally bumped into her and sent her journal sprawling to the ground. It was such a normal occurrence back then that this preliminary meeting hadn’t even registered as such.)

At any rate, when Lucretia meets him during introductions he has a bright, big, almost super-star grin on his face. There are deep lines at the corners of his mouth, speaking of just how often he grins like this. Lucretia adds this to her notes about him. There are similar deep lines between his eyebrows, and she writes down musings about where and why they came to be like that.

Before they step out on stage, she sees the angry face. The mysterious deep lines are in effect, brow drawn together tight. His grin is gone, mouth turned down in what is almost a sneer. His eyes are sharp, predatory looking like most fighters are, and it looks like he’s glaring out at the audience. It sends a jolt down her spine even as she jots down everything she ~~thinks she~~ sees in those eyes. Anger at the crowd, at being gawked at, at maybe having to do this press conference at all. She’s a little terrified of him, but also intrigued and hopeful that maybe on this little excursion she’ll be able to find out why he was so angry. Her primary mission is of course to record what they see and find, but perhaps there will be small chances to add more notes about her fellow travelers to the record.

They step out on the stage, and the angered expression is once again replaced by the grin. The sparkling super-star grin stays there as he and Lup joke around. He has these shades on his eyes that almost cover up that pinch in his brow.

The grin stays on his face for most of the night, even throughout the bar fight that is such an interesting way to start off a mission and Lucretia writes it all down, laughing to herself and excited. This is going to be amazing!

That night is the last night they’ll be spending at the IPRE headquarters ~~ever~~ for a while. Lucretia had a hard time falling asleep and went for a walk through the halls one more time. She left her book back in her room but had brought along pen just in case something noteworthy happened. She could write it on her arm and then record it in the journals later.

She sees Magnus standing in one of the halls. At first she thinks he’s looking outside, but by the way that he’s turning his head and touching the scruff of his sideburns and gently ghosting his fingers over the ugly black eye of his it becomes obvious he’s looking at his reflection. His face is angry again, furious burning gaze looking at his own face, that pinch between his eyebrows in full swing. One corner of his mouth is twitching. Was he angry he’d gotten a black eye? Worried it would ruin his image?

She decides not to ask and returns to her room.

The photoshoot as the boarded the Starblaster did not support Lucretia’s theory. She noticed as Magnus twisted this way and that before the cameras to ensure that his black eye was in every picture. Movie-star grin, winking a few times, seemingly proud and perfectly pleased with the injury he’d gotten the night before.

They stand on the deck of the ship as they leave their plane of existence. They watch their world get devoured - see their world for what they don’t yet know is the last time - and even with the shock and horror filling her, Lucretia goes on to a sort of autopilot, looking at her companions and taking note of their reactions, already processing and planning how she’s going to describe them. She doesn’t know what else to _do._

Magus’ face is pinched and furious and glaring daggers at the mass. The edges of his eyes kind of pull back a bit and that predatory feel is coming off of him again. She remembers what he said during the press conference. ‘I’m the only weapon we need’.

She believes it.

But she also doesn’t know how he could fight _that._

 

oOo

 

They spend years and years together, an impossible amount of time that has no clear end. They just keep going.

What else is there to do than chase the light?

It is after maybe their second cycle, their second ‘year’ she notates, that she comes to realize that Magnus really only has three expressions. His has his pinched up angry looking face, his grin that though brilliant she actually comes to know as ‘shit-eating’. The final expression is just blank, like when he’s asleep but not dreaming or knocked out. When he’s dreaming, the angry look is back.

During the third cycle, she asks Magnus about it. He blinks and the grin he’d had on is replaced by angry again and his eyes widen a bit.

“Oh, that? Yeah, I’ve been told I look like I’m about to kill people.” He says, and the grin comes back.

Lucretia wonders how often he was told that growing up.

She wonders how long it took him to get sick of the question, maybe sick of his face.

She wonders how if he practiced making that grin in the mirror.

(She writes this down in her journals too)

 

oOo

 

Five cycles later, she makes sure to note a revision in her journals that she had been wrong before. Magnus does not have three expression. Or he does, but the angry have has a bunch of sub-expressions in it.

She learns them. They all do.

The small crinkling on his eyes that said he was pleased about something.

The lift in his eyebrows when he was curious

Twitching in his left eye when wary about something.

The way every line in his face got deep deep deep like a sea when he was truly angry.

The small lift of the corner of his mouth when he was pleased about something - like when he’d first gotten the black eye.

The pull back at the edges of his eyes that is fear.

 

oOo

 

Magnus cultivated emotions over time.

The grin, angry, and blank are joined by a true look of surprise by year twenty.

Next comes actual sadness, which he shows as they fly away from year twenty-two with no choice but to let it get devoured.

She catches him in the bathroom practicing what eventually becomes a nicer, warmer smile. He catches her catching him and she steps fully inside the bathroom, grabbing the toothbrush from the cabinet.

“... don’t want to scare locals.” He doesn’t need to explain, she doesn’t ask him to, but he does anyway.

“You don’t scare us.” She reassures him and pecks him on the cheek. “Only your showering habits do.”

It devolves into a water fight pretty quickly after that.

And the world ends over and over again and Lucretia hates to admit it to herself, but she’s never been as happy as she is than when she is with her crew, her family.

 

oOo

 

Lucretia picks up things from everyone over time.

It’s impossible _not_ to.

From Davenport she gets snapping when she’s trying to find the perfect for something.

She couldn’t wiggle her ears before the Starblaster, but now she wiggles them back whenever peeved, like she’s trying to flick her ear like the twins do.

Merle knocks twice on anything made of wood. The twins do it to make fun of him starting in cycle three, but by cycle ten they are all doing it unironically.

Barry bites his nails and they gang up on getting him to drop the habit. It becomes like a curse where one person will manage to free themself of it, but another picks it right up.

If she’s deep in thought, she’ll glide her finger across her wrist as if writing her thoughts. This seems to be what she contributes to the pot of habits.

From Magnus, she starts to crease her brow.

 

oOo

 

“Oh _Magnus.”_

He wasn’t supposed to _be here._ He wasn’t supposed to _see this._

Watching the books being eaten by Fisher was bad enough, but this was like watching her own arm being cut off.

Lucretia rushes over to the fighter as he grips his head. A wooden duck falls to the ground and the confusion on his face is melting into that pissed off expression. But the wide eyes and the biting on the inside of his cheek says that he’s still confused. She can almost feel his facial expression, the range he’d developed over a century, draining away.

And then that angry expression fades into the blank as most of Magnus Burnsides slips into static.

 

oOo

 

Trying to get the animus bell was a mistake.

Wonderland was a mistake.

Maybe this whole mess was a mistake.

Lucretia managed to get to a tavern, to get a room. She got to the bed before breaking down and crying, sobbing into blanket on the bed. Her family isn’t here for her, she’d driven they away, forced them away. But she isn’t quite alone.

“Davenport?”

Davenport walks over, confused, and Lucretia cries harder. At least she’d had the sense not to bring him with her.

It’s hours before she has the strength to stand. Davenport stays by her side the entire time. When she finally gets up, it takes strength to step towards the mirror, to see who she is now.

She cries again, and laughs like an insane woman, but she can’t help it.

The crease is there, between her eyebrows, just like Magnus.

She used to always get reset, but now things like that stuck. Scars lasted and wrinkles persisted.

Lucretia falls asleep collapsed in front of the mirror, not having the strength to move.

 

oOo

 

Seeing Magnus, Merle, and Taako again is like a punch in the stomach.

Taako still looks oddly incomplete without his sister there.

Merle is tan from his years on the beach, his years with his new family.

And Magnus… Magnus has that angry face again.

It twitches in a way she doesn’t quite recognize at first, but soon realizes is curiosity. It was different now, a little softer, a little more open. It’s new.

Lucretia schools her expression to hide how the ‘new’ feels like death.


End file.
